Born to Run: How Oversee.net
Co-Founder and CEO Lawrence Ng Built a Company with $200 Million
in Annual Revenue Before His 30th Birthday

The
wave of consolidation that has swept through the domain
industry over the past couple of years has left a handful of
giants at the head of the pack. Oversee.net
is certainly one of those, having assembled some of the
best-known brands in this space, including DomainSponsor.com,
SnapNames.com and Moniker.com.

Oversee also owns approximately 600,000
domains of their own and through DomainSponsor they monetize
over 2 million more for other domain owners. They also
operate leading websites in the mortgage and travel fields with Low.com
and LowFares.com.
The company’s annual revenues topped $200 million in
2007 (up from $125 million the year before).

Building that kind of empire would take
a lifetime for most businessmen, so it is hard to get your head
around the fact that Oversee’s energetic Co-Founder and CEO Lawrence
Ng is just 29years old. Ng and a pal from his
college days, Fred Hsu, started Oversee from scratch in
2000, just after the original .com bubble had burst and everyone
else thought the game was over. Ng and Hsu refused to believe
that.

Fast
forward to 2007 and there was Lawrence Ng accepting
Ernst & Young’s prestigious Entrepreneur
of the Year Award in the Technology category for
Greater Los Angeles. Also last year, the Technology
Council of Southern California honored Oversee with
its Internet and New Media Company of the Year Award
and the Los Angeles Business Journal said
that Oversee was the year’s third fastest growing
private company in Los Angeles in any category.

I love
entrepreneurial success stories and it was becoming
obvious that a great one was unfolding at Oversee.
Better yet all of these good things were happening for the
kind of man that people want to see succeed. I’ve
watched Ng interact with hundreds of attendees at his DOMAINfest
Global conferences in Hollywood, California
over the past couple of years and he is always polite and
unfailingly humble. Ng greets everyone as if they were
guests in his own home. From the first time I met him his
manner struck me as being that of someone with wisdom and
maturity far beyond their years.

My guess was that Ng had
been an “early bloomer” so when I began delving into his
story it didn’t surprise me to learn that indeed had been the
case – especially where business is concerned. Ng was
born in Hong Kong but his family moved to the United
States when he was 3 years old. After his parents divorced
his mother was left to raise Lawrence and his older brother in
New York on her own.

“One
memory that stuck out in my childhood was that I was not given
any allowance or other financial assistance,” Ng recalled.
”So at an early age, I learned I had to spend wisely
and earn my own way. I always looked for ways to earn
money and make a better living.”

That
drive to succeed served Ng well as he looked at every job as an
opportunity to learn. “From paper routes and food delivery to
buying and selling cars and various jobs in larger corporations,
I gained a lot of experience and business acumen early on,” Ng
said. “I think my thirst for knowledge has been the
driving force behind me since I was young.”

After
finishing high school, Ng headed to New York City’s
Pace University where his work ethic went into
overdrive. “I held four jobs during that time
that helped me learn about the inner workings of the
business world, including considerable knowledge from a
number of high-profile corporations. It gave me a taste
for the tremendous opportunities that were available and
gave me the foundation of the solid business practices
that are now the linchpin of Oversee. I interned at Merrill
Lynch, which provided me with exposure to financial
consulting while a job at Smith Barney helped me
better understand the role of marketing. Both jobs gave
me excellent insights into all aspects of an
organization and how it operates.”

In
1998 Ng decided to move to Los Angeles and
continue his undergraduate work at the University of
Southern California while interning with the local
Smith Barney office. While still in school he also took
a job with a new Internet advertising company called Startpath.
Fred Hsu, who was a computer science student across
town at UCLA also went to work at Startpath. He
and Ng met there and began a relationship that would change
their lives forever.

At
Startpath they learned a lot about the technology and tactics
used to drive traffic to websites.However when the .com bubble burst in 2000 Startpath was
one of the many tech companies that collapsed in the wreckage. Still
Ng was excited about what he had learned - so much so that despite
the dreary climate for web-based startups at that time he
decided to start his own business. “Fred and I both
realized the importance of quality Internet traffic and decided
to use our collective expertise in online advertising, Internet
traffic patterns and search engine optimization to create
Oversee. This was at a time when many had given up on the
Internet,” Ng said.

“I
think one of the most interesting things we did with creating
Oversee is in the timing. There were no venture
capitalists that were willing to help companies that were
Internet-based. I envisioned how the Internet could really
change the advertising market. This would be possible by taking
a scientific approach by adding performance metrics that would
bring quantitative results for clients. We quickly moved to
understanding that quality Internet traffic would drive the
future success of Oversee,” Ng said.

Ng
speaking at the 2007 DOMAINfest
Global conference in Hollywood, CA

“So,
we used our modest savings and began Oversee without any
outside funding. We started in a small office (about 400
square feet) located near the Skid Row section of
downtown Los Angeles. It was not a pretty area! Ron
Sheridan was our first employee.” Though they
looked like a 1,000 to 1 shot at best, Ng and Hsu,
starting with just $10,000 between them, beat
all the odds.

“Oversee
has experienced tremendous organic growth in the last
seven years, increasing the scale of our existing
businesses that fall into either domain services or
marketing services,” Ng said.“DomainSponsor was really the beginning of it
all and today we monetize 2.5 million domain
names. We also have a $100 million line of credit
with Bank of America to fuel the company’s
growth through acquisitions.”

“Our
acquisitions of SnapNames and Moniker were based on the
premise that we wanted to get into the aftermarket space
and grow our share of the domain industry, becoming a one-stop
shop for domainers and domain

investors.
And then Oak Hill Capital Partners, a private
equity firm, invested $150 million in us,"
Ng noted. "We plan to use the investment to augment
organic growth and acquire technologies that will
enhance our suite of services in the online marketing
and domain name industries.”

Their
meteoric rise has caught people’s attention, including the New
York Times who featured Ng and Oversee in an October
2006 article
by James Flanagan. Three months after the Times article,
Oversee entered still another arena with their first
DOMAINfest Global conference in Hollywood,
California. They has previously done some regional shows but
this was the first one with a worldwide focus.

Scene
from the SnapNames Live Domain Auction at DOMAINfest
Global 2008 in January

When
asked why Oversee got into the conference business and
how doing so fit in with their overall mission Ng said,
“I believe that the domain industry was maturing,
which opened the door to a new and different type of
conference. As a company, we wanted to bring competitors
and

partners
together, which nobody had done before, to leverage each
other’s good ideas and create an innovative forum
where we could help to propel the credibility and
respect of the domain industry to a new level.”

“While there were
other shows out there, none had taken the approach we
had. The domain industry has incredible potential
and I think, for the first time, others outside the
industry are realizing that. The DomainFEST Global event
has brought something different to the industry
conference arena by offering a unique experience,
including the SnapNames
Live auctions, a great roster of speakers,
global exhibitors, and a chance to network and have fun.
We have received such positive responses from attendees
that we are already planning next year’s event.”

As they plan for
the future Oversee has a lot more elbow room than they
did during their days in that 400-foot office near Skid
Row. A lot more manpower too. “Since our start in 200
we have grown from two employees to approximately 200 at
the end of 2007,” Ng said. “We have significantly
increased our square footage too, going from that first
tiny office to a larger headquarters in downtown Los
Angeles (26,000 square feet), then on to a beautiful new
space that covers about 56,000 square feet on the 43rd
and 44th floors of the City National
building, also in downtown L.A. We also have SnapNames
located in Portland, Oregon and Moniker is in Pompano
Beach, Florida.”

Oversee's
new offices cover two floors
inL.A.'s City National Building (above)

Lawrence
Ng and Fred HsuOversee.net Co-Founders

With
the business continuing to grow quickly and the
company’s future apparently secure, Ng said his friend
and partner "Fred Hsu decided to “retire” from
day-to-day operations in 2007.” Ng added “As
Oversee’s Co-founder, Fred has been an essential
part of our success, developing the technology that has
helped to make us a leader. He continues to be a major
company shareholder and is an active member of
Oversee’s Board of Directors.”

Meeting
Fred proved to Ng how important it is to work with the
right kind of people. “It is vital that we
bring in smart, tech savvy people who have a good work
ethic.” Ng said. “We also work very hard at
continually improving our work environment so that we
can retain the talented people we hire. I have pulled a
lot of best practices from other companies to create a
culture that encourages professional and personal growth
as well as community involvement.I believe that being a hands-on leader has helped keep

our
talented team in place. In the end, it is really about
matching positions with skill sets to build a more
creative and productive workforce.”

Ng
is not the type who likes to spend a lot of time talking about
himself but when pressed to describe what attributes he thinks
helped him build Oversee into what it is today Ng said “I
believe that I am humble in my approach towards business. There
is always a way to do things better. For me, there is
always a new goal to reach for to help improve my own
experience, enhance the team’s talent, and grow the metrics of
the business. There is a significant amount left to learn about
business. I envision that the company will continue to expand,
improving and increasing services in both our domain and
marketing services divisions.”

Of
course the direction of the Internet advertising and domain
industry at large will have an impact on Oversee’s individual
fortunes. Internet ad revenues have been booming for years,
growing at an annual clip of around 30%. Still Ng said,
“I would not necessarily characterize the Internet ad business
as experiencing a boom. That sends the message that there is a
probability of a bust on the horizon. I believe it is better to
say that it has enjoyed steady growth because of the returns
generated for advertisers. In addition, the medium has offered
precise targeting and accountability that has not been
experienced in other forms of advertising.”

Ng
speaking at the 2008 DOMAINfest
Global conference in Hollywood, CA

Ng
also had one other prediction about the future of this
industry. ”I certainly see consolidation increasing
over the next couple of years.This is only the beginning of what’s to come.We hope to be leading much of this
consolidation.”

Though
things look
good there is always the chance that something could
upset the apple cart. I asked Ng what he viewed as
potential threats to the rapid growth the industry has
enjoyed in recent years. “As with any industry, the
domain industry and its stakeholders must continue to
mature where more standardization and best practices are
instituted to raise the bar on who participates in this
business,” Ng said. “By incorporating a higher level
of quality initiatives, those that do not fit that
standard should fall by the wayside. This will be vital
for the industry because as more people become
interested in online advertising and domains, they will
demand the same level of accountability and standards
that have long been a part of the traditional
advertising mediums.”

Ng
added, “In terms of legislation that is being proposed
about standardizing the industry, we

have
to be clear about what our industry does, its reputation
and its willingness to live by best practices so that
regulators, legislators, and the media perceive us
correctly. That’s why we all have to work as a
group to build a true understanding of the
issues.”

To
that end, Oversee was one of the co-founders of the Internet
Commerce Association, the non-profit trade
association based inWashington,
D.C. that represents the interests of domain owners.

Though
Ng has sprinted to the front of the domain field in record time, he
always has the long run in mind. In fact he is a marathon
runner in real life. He has completed two Los Angeles Marathons
and is already training for the 2009 event.

L.A.
Marathon runners turn onto Hollywood Boulevard. Ng has been there and done that (twice).

Though
no one can predict what the future will bring Ng’s
approach will be, as it has been throughout his life, to
make his own good fortune through hard work. “We
are continually

looking
for ways to extend our current capabilities whether it
is by adding new talent, acquiring more domain name
portfolios, partnering with the right organization, or
buying companies. Our goal is finding the right people
and companies that are capable of working with our
technology and our culture. There is so much
potential out there!”

That’s a fact and
it reminds me of something Grambling’s
legendary football coach Eddie Robinson once
said, “The will to win, the desire to succeed, the
urge to reach your full potential... these are the keys
that will unlock the door to personal excellence.”
Lawrence Ng is a prime example of the kind of person
Eddie Robinson was talking about.